Bad Movies Marathon: Ratman (1988) dir, Giuliano Carnimeo

Exploitation film spans a wide range of subgenres, and every now and then you get a good one. You get a lot of bad ones. And then you get those that are so below amateur that it's funny. This kind of exploitation movie  are the kind that have been dug out of attics and re-released by Shameless Screen Entertainment in a range of bright yellow cases. Shameless sports a colourful and ridiculous portfolio of titles, such as Don't Torture A Duckling (1972), Satan's Baby Doll (1982) and Love Goddess of the Cannibals (1978). When out for a cheap laugh, my Dad and I spotted Ratman. We were somewhat shocked to see full nudity on the cover, and when we noticed its subtitle- "The critter from the shitter!"- we had to check it out.

So, let's start with the basics. Ratman is your typical cheap exploitation film- Italian makers, shot in South America, badly dubbed, and plenty of gratuitous nudity. Then throw in your title character, the result of an inconceivable experiment fertilising a rat ovum with human sperm, who is played by the World's Smallest Man, Nelson De La Rosa. Of course, the little guy escapes and starts running rampant around some holiday resort, picking off supposed fashion models, who are dumber than usual by not thinking to pick their attacker up by the scruff of the neck and tie him in a pillowcase! They have clearly never modelled before either. If not because they dry their hair without turning the drier on, for their frenetic technique. Instead of posing for hours at a time in carefully crafted positions, they prance off in unknown directions and gesticulate wildly while an equally unprofessional photographer tries to keep up. Female horror victims making dumb mistakes is pretty standard, but these girls are dumb on a whole new level!

When one of said bimbos goes missing, her sister travels to the island in an attempt to identify several bodies.  She meets your typical B-movie hero when she shares a cab with him, and within minutes he is accompanying her to the mortuary, because he's a writer looking for new material. As you do.
They slowly follow the sister and pursuing Ratman's trail by a series of inexplicable realisations, while the sister happens upon Ratman's creator and takes a ridiculously caressive shower, before making a string of dumb-ass moves that leave only a fridge between her and her newborn-sized attacker.

Ratman has an 18 certificate, and I can't see any material worthy of such a classification. There is some American Pie-level nudity, and some Scary Movie-level violence. If anyone as young as 12 had nothing better to do with their youth, they could watch Ratman with minimal permanent damage, except perhaps shame on the filmmakers' behalf. The cast are sterile of any acting talent, the story jumps from point to point without seeing the need to explain the journeys in between, cinematography is lazy and unimaginative, and dialogue is just implausibly bad. Dad and I joked about holding Bad Movie Marathons, stocked by Shameless and hosted by Elvira. Her quick-minded double entendres would bring this trash to its knees, and would make it all the more mockable.